10 Awful Things I Saw In The First Hour Of 007 Legends

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Skyfall has becom the biggest-grossing, most heavily product-placed and most three-completely-different-films-mashed-together Bond movie of all time. Clearly then, the recently-released tie-in game must be a thoughtful, high-budget affair with a long development cycle and the upmost understanding of what makes Bond Bond. Clearly. 007 Legends essentially retells older Bold adventures but as starring Daniel ‘Mini-Hulk’ Craig and a raft of more modern technology. I knew in my bones that this would be a faithful and careful recreation of the cavalier Secret Agent fantasy, and definitely not a mucky, ugly, by the numbers first-person shooter whose PC version was less console port and more console diarrhea that had accidentally dribbled onto PC.

I put on my best (only) bowtie and went in. Here’s what I discovered in my first and only foray into 007 Legends. Would it leave me shaken or stirred lol zing etc?

1. After a short cutscene based on the opening cliffhanger of Skyfall, we segue into a flashback to Goldfinger. Jill Masterson’s horrifying, iconic, death-by-paint scene rather loses its impact when it’s accompanied by immediate product placement for a Sony Xperia phone, which you must pick up from near Masterson’s limp, gilded hand, gaze carefully at the logo of and then take a call on. Bond’s enormous, overtly-logoed Omega watch/motion detector isn’t doing too much for the gravitas either.

2. In theory this is the game running at 1920×1080 (this shot is cropped rather than resized). That blur, that aliasing, the lack of any definition – I’m not convinced. It looks abominable, and as though it’s Star Trek Love Interest-style soft focus throughout. I suspect there’s some upscaling going on, or perhaps it’s that the game’s so retrograde that it made my PC go back in time.

3. All the cool things Bond does – like jumping onto a moving truck or plunging 100 foot in the sea – happen only in cutscenes. In the game itself, he can only shoot, crouch and bunny-hop.

4. Every enemy repeatedly shouts ‘I’m reloading!’ to themselves, regardless of whether they have any chums in range or not. IT’S ALMOST AS THOUGH IT’S A MESSAGE FOR ME.

5. There’s no mouse support in menus, so the game asks for such PC gaming mainstays as Page Up and Page Down while trying to navigate its stodgy weapon upgrade interface.

6. Time to horrible hacking minigame: 20 minutes. This involves yet another big-screen look at a Sony Xperia phone, while trying to modulate two frequency graphs by pressing T,G,U and H. On the plus side, it seemed to solve itself after a few minutes of my aggrieved scrabbling for the right buttons.

7. Bond can be shot by approximately 14 men simultaneously without being in any apparent danger.

8. Daniel Craig provides vocal duties [edit – oh, apparently it’s a Craigalike. Whoops. He’s got the basic impression right, but not much else, in which case], but appears to be reading his lines aloud for the first time and with evident disinterest, with the net result being that One Of Britain’s Most Treasured Actors sounds as though he’s about to fluff an audition for Hollyoaks.

9. During the Goldfinger mission, Bond must locate and follow a trail of nerve gas using a special filter on his SonyTM XperiaTM SmartphoneTM. Fortunately for him, deadly gas looks exactly like a gigantic purple sausage and conveniently hugs against one wall rather than spreads. If he walks into that sausage he’s dead, but if he stands one millimetre to the right of it he’s a-OK. While Bond needs said special filter to see it, enemies are magically aware of exactly where this invisible death-sausage is at all times and avoid it in their looped patrols.

10. The second major level is an insta-fail stealth mission which forces an immediate game-over if you are seen or kill anyone. This despite the fact that Bond just noisily left a mountain of worryingly all-Asian corpses in the room next door, so if Goldfinger and co are somehow unaware that all their men are dead and their base keeps exploding it seems highly unlikely they’d be smart enough to pull off their nefarious plans for world domination anyway. If you like, you could interpret the fact that I abandoned the game upon failing this mission for the first time as faithful, iron man-style roleplaying.

It’s a real shame because stories before mobile phones have an incredible amount of tension. Watch the first season/s of X-Files for example: When you don’t have instant contact with your comrades getting a new piece of information to them in time is instantly thrilling.

It helps that it also gives an excuse for those moments where people wade into danger without having to resort to artificial stupidity or the-phone-doesn’t-work-here-because-technobabble

Mobile phones/the Internet have ruined drama/suspense – which is why most authors simply set their stuff in the past/future (where devices don’t exist or can be jammed or whatever) or write something else entirely…

Remember the golden rule tho

Anything invented before you were 18 has existed forever and is a given
Anything invented between 18 and 30 is a miracle you cannot upbraid enough
Anything invented after you’re 30 will destroy society and should be banned

On the contrary, I’d say, mobile phones have enriched the palette, created new possibilities. “Why don’t they pick up the phone?” “Dammit, I’m in the middle of something!” “Omg they’re gonna hear it don’t!..” etc. etc.

This also brings up other problems: It’s really difficult to film a scene that features the actor talking into their hand without losing all tension. Same for the actor, who lacks another stage presence to play off of.

Imo it’s not that different, except you can’t show all of participants without splitscreen. Outside of that it’s generally the same. As for tension, it’s not face-to-face conversation that creates it, it’s context.

Minor point of information: Many big screen films are scheduled and shot in such a way that the big stars in a shot / reverse shot scene are not being filmed at the same time, and sometimes – not often, but more than you’d expect – one actor is not even present on set while the other plays out half of a dialogue for the tight shot. Playing to absolutely nobody is not a new challenge for any decent actor, indeed it’s a requirement of almost any audition.

Maintaining tension in a scene where someone is talking on the phone is an important consideration, but it’s not an insurmountable challenge.

The other problem is, it’s dull to watch people yap away on phones. Couldn’t stand watching 24 because of that, as every 30 seconds some one seemed to be blabbing down a mobile phone. I swear Jack Bauer spent over half of every episode on the phone.

If it’s not that then it’s the old hacking scene; tappity tap on the keyboard and 5 seconds later, “I’ve just broken into their mainframe, downloading the files now!” I think NCIS is the worst program ever for that; what kind of fantasy world did they dream that program up from?

When I was a kid, phones were attached to walls and everyone shared it. You would be talking to your friends and your sister/brother/parents would pick up one of the other phones so they could listen in on your conversation. You had a piece of paper that you would write people’s names and phone numbers down on. Your internet speed was determined by your modem, not your ISP. And I had to walk to school, uphill, both ways. In the snow. And with plagues of locusts…

Do pay attention 007, it’s the second sentence of the first paragraph (ffs): “007 Legends essentially retells older Bold adventures but as starring Daniel ‘Mini-Hulk’ Craig and a raft of more modern technology.”

I think it’s a fine panning as well. However, some of the best “generally negative” opinion pieces/WITs on RPS, have, in my humble opinion, been written by Mr. Walker. References: Dragon Age 2, MW3 WITs.

That said, I’d love to see more of these as well, regardless of author.

Of course. It’s a video game, after all. If it started drinking I would be a bit worried.
But if it wanted to make love? Man, I’d grab a camera and put the videos on the internet. I’m sure there are people who would find that exciting and would be willing to pay top dollar to see more! ‘Goldfinger’ indeed!

There IS a thing inside me that awakens whenever somebody tells me with great conviction not to do something. I think it’s called defiance and it makes me do the exact opposite of what more sensible people suggest. Fortunately, invisible death sausages are one of my phobias, so my wallet might be save this time.

I know people will have different feelings towards this but I’d rather be killed by an invisible sausage than a visible one. The not-knowing would give me a sense of mystery that would maybe offset my imminent death. Knowing it’s a sausage killing me would trivialise my long struggle through life.

So, 7/10 then? I gotta say, this is a fantastic way to review an apparently terrible game. It left me with little doubt as to your opinion.

Also, when the hell did product placement become a thing in games? I don’t remember Gordon Freeman being all like “Okay guys before we get to fighting these head crabs I need to stop by Home Depot to get a crowbar, now only $18.99. Also make sure to stock those health kits with Tylenol, the only pain medication proven to work on being sprayed with alien goop.”

My first contact with ridiculous product placement was Biker Mice from Mars on the SNES, the European version had Snickers candy bar all over the game (in the menu, as an upgrade, in the billboards on every level, as a bonus item, etc). It was a pretty good game too.

I’m almost glad that paid product placement is in games now, given all the unpaid product placement of certain brands that was occurring before (and, more perversely, game makers paying auto-makers for the licensing rights to allow certain vehicles to appear in their games).

Homefront’s devs, if you believe their post-mortems, went after real products because they thought it would improve the verosimilarity of their fiction. That they thought using real products instead of expies would be better betrays an absurd lack of imagination, but they didn’t do it for the mullah.

The only people who think product placement in Alan Wake is blatant are those who didn’t play it and heard something about there being an achievement for watching an ad.

By blatant (poor wording on my part), I mean “overt”, which is what product placement is supposed to be doing anyway. All product placement is overt in the sense that consumers are going to see it whether they consciously realize it or not — if that were not the case, companies wouldn’t bother paying for it. There’s a reason large marketing firms employ full-time psychologists.

As for Alan Wake? One of the game’s major play mechanics is the flashlight. What do you need to power the flashlight? Batteries — Energizer batteries to be precise. That little fact is made pretty obvious in the game by the first time you pick the damn flashlight up. You’ll also find products being shilled for Microsoft, Verizon, and one or two car makers.

Speaking of Alan Wake, I think I’ll play some more of that tonight. Great game despite the product placement.

They came up with an explanation for that phenomenon for the Uncharted series, every shot that ‘hits’ you is just Drake freaking out over near misses, and only the one that kills you was an actual hit. The life meter isn’t a life meter but represents your luck and catlike reflexes or something. Which is why it can recharge, see?

It would’ve been pretty clever if the game had just had the occasional shootout instead of going full on Gears for twenty minutes at a time.

Bond games are kind of a free target. One of those games that reviewers know most readers don’t expect much of, and know that not many readers will try to defend. So reviewers are free to skewer the game. Plus, it gives them a chance to name-drop GoldenEye to show their hardcore gamer cred.

It’s similar to how Koei’s Dynasty Warriors franchises have long been whipping boys, where “average” suddenly means “4.5/10” instead of “8/10”, and reviewers copy/paste their text. (Which led to silliness like Gamespot’s negative review of Samurai Warriors 3 talking about the game being set in the wrong time period and wrong country. When Gamespot was roasted for the mistakes, with users questioning whether the reviewer had even played the game, Gamespot silently edited the article and removed all the user comments.)

It’s a shame this is apparently terrible, I actually enjoyed Goldeneye Reloaded for what it was, COD going to a Halloween party as James Bond. Had some fun set pieces and you know what you’re getting gunplay wise. Definitely don’t regret that rental.

Might I just say that Quantum of Solace should still win the ‘most product placement ever’ award, even if it is just for the scene where Bond uses a crappy Sony phone with apparently the best camera ever fitted to a mobile phone.

No, I just threw that in there cause it had to be said, I didn’t mean to imply you bashed Skyfall ;)

Die Another Day paraded around the products of 20 different companies who reportedly paid a total of 70 million for that. Casino Royale dropped that number to 8 and it has stayed relatively low since, so I honestly don’t get all the hate towards how Quantum of Solac and Skyfall (unless I am misinterpreting Alec’s words) did it.

The new set of Bonds (post-Craig) has lowered the number but increased the impact of the product placement – the most egregious example being that Bond’s drink of choice is now a Heineken, rather than a Shaken Vodka Martini. It’s the worst example of Bond product placement since Brosnan replaced the Aston Martin with a BMW. I mean really? They couldn’t find a Vodka company and at least kept the drink the same?

I saw the movie last week and I don’t even remember the Heineken. I remember the whiskey (well, brown stuff) in Turkey with the thing on the hand and the shaken martini in Macau, but no Heineken. Fine product placement that must’ve been.

I don’t understand the sudden hate on product placement in these games. Shooters have advertised products of manufacturers like Remington Arms and Heckler & Koch and Magnum Research and Colt Defenses and all other gun manufacturers for YEARS and not once was this ever derided. But as soon as something as pedestrian as a smartphone appears in a video game – SHOCK HORROR RIDICULE…

Sometimes product placement can enhance a game by making it feel more realistic, drawing you into it. The gun example you just gave is that kind of product placement in a shooter. Another example might be if Rockstar threw up Coke billboards in Liberty City – they wouldn’t seem out of place there, as those are the kinds of billboard advertisements you would expect to see when driving around a major metropolitan area.

Most of this stuff is BLATANTLY there as a product placement cash-in, making it very jarring for the player.

He actually needs a bullet/water/chemicals/explosives-proof, satellite communicating, encrypted to the bone, phone (with a much bigger lens image capture), that would look like a small brick. Same with the VAIO, he isn't using it to watch Youtube videos and browse reddit.

Sony didn't even tried, they could have made a "Sony 00" laptop, looking all prototypish and futuristic. No, they just put the laptop you can buy at any western supermarket, in the freaking MI6 offices.

What's next, James Bond drinking some cheap beer ? …

Product placement was always there, but it was subtle and not with low/middle-class products, James Bond isn't supposed to work with stuff the viewer is already buying on a weekly basis (at least), the "You too can be James Bond by shopping at walmart !" is just crap, that stuff is barely acceptable with kids and plastic toys, how could they do this to grown adults is beyond my comprehension.

James Bond is supposed to be "that alpha male with all the girls, all the gadgets, defeating all his enemies", not an average Joe drinking beer while eating his pizza in front of the TV, while wearing a wifebeater. That's just bollocks. They want to make it less sexist, to attract the "progressive" and women audience ? Fine, make him less of a "gotta screw them all" and double-check the seduction scenes. It doesn't need to lose all his uniqueness.

Turning him into an average Joe, acting like a top spy, stuck with supermarket products, is a ridiculous move.

PS: I saw the movie, enjoyed it, enjoyed how they tried to make a "different" James Bond, how they didn't went too far (most of the time) in each cliché/tropes they used through the movie. But they dropped the whole "I'm classy" part, threw the average-man's trolley in his hands and forgot about the gratuitous destruction (also, no russians, not a single hint) – what's left of James Bond ?

More so when you’ve got several weapons of each type. It is easier to get away with “generic assault rifle” when your game has only one assault rifle. When your game has four, people start to want to know what each rifle is, and beyond gameplay terms of “fires 3 round bursts”, “automatic, but with less range”, “single fire, deadly accurate”, etc. They might be fine with “revolver” or just “handgun”, but they get more identification with and power trip from “Desert Eagle”, “.44 Magnum”, and the like.

Look at S.T.A.L.K.E.R., and the mods that give the guns their real names.

The names actually mean something. And more so when developers try to tie their in-game representations with reality.

You don’t get that same connection with an Xperia phone, at least not until Sony starts including deadly gas vision filters in the Xperia line.

I don’t know man, I don’t think your average gamer has enough love for real life guns to be able to recognize them by name. They know what an MP5 or M4 or M16 or AK47 are, but that’s only because such weapons have been used by name in games since forever and in other media.

You could, for example, create an accurate model of a Remington 51, call it by the same name, etc, but to the average gamer it would be no different if you simply made any old handgun and called it Madeupname Number5.

There are guns recognized by name, though. Or at the very least, the name is recognized even if the person couldn’t tell you anything particularly specific about the gun.

And, as games continue to use real gun names, it only helps people recognize those names. Even if they only know an FAL from Call of Duty, they end up recognizing the name if they see it in another game. And because it is a real name, they do see it in other games, unlike different developers using different names for their fictional weapons.

I’m not saying every game should use real world weapon names. I’m just saying that it is different from a Bond game bludgeoning the player with a Sony Xperia.

“Bond just noisily left a mountain of worryingly all-Asian corpses in the room next door”
Are you worried about the fact that you just killed a lot of people, that they didn’t notice the activity, or their skin color? I mean unless this level takes place in a distinctly non-Asian populated region and doesn’t involve fighting a distinctly non-Asian group, it doesn’t seem odd. Places tend to be populated by the groups they originate from, or by the local population. Perhaps we should localize by genetic trends to appease Alec who is unaware of demographics?

Probably because every word of the article is an insult, including the title and subheading, and it ends with an exhortation not to buy the damn thing. Bad mouse acceleration is only something you notice once you’ve bought the game. Which they told you in no uncertain terms not to do.

Also, given that the port was described as “console diarrhea,” is it really that surprising that the mouse acceleration is terrible? I would take that as a given.

This could be an incredible lucrative gaming franchise. It has so much potential as an action/stealth techno thriller with lots of cool gadgets.
Who for heaven’s sake is selling these rights to the 007 franchise to produce such shit.

I couldn’t take more than 20min. with this game. The aiming is terrible!
I usually crank up my sensitivity over the half (i have verry accurate aim) but it doesn’t behave as expected. Looking around is fine but when i try to aim at enemy – suddenly the mouse sensitivity goes super low.

I didn’t saw any mouse setting other than reverse and sensitivity. Anyone have an idea how to make it behave like… normally?